Leandro Bisiach
Encyclopedia
Biography
Leandro Bisiach (1864 – 1945) was a violin maker born in Casale MonferratoCasale Monferrato
Casale Monferrato, population 36,058, is a town and comune in the Piedmont region of north-west Italy, part of the province of Alessandria. It is situated about 60 km east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrato hills. Beyond the river lies the...
Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
and died in 1945 at Venegono Superiore
Venegono Superiore
Venegono Superiore is a comune in the Province of Varese in the Italian region Lombardy, located about 40 km northwest of Milan and about 9 km southeast of Varese...
.
Trained as a violinist, he made his first violin on his own and received praise for it. Thus he decided to become a violin maker and moved to Milan to work with the Antoniazzi family in 1886. With them he established a partnership of exceptional importance, putting to good use his artistic skills and business ability. After having moved his workshop to various premises, he retired to his villa in Venegono (Varese) leaving his sons to continue the business in Milan.
Bisiach was an outstanding figure in the commerce of antique violins but above all had the merit of raising a generation of great luthiers, among whom for example Gaetano Sgarabotto, Igino Sderci, Pietro Borghi, Ornati and Garimberti come to mind.
His workshop can be considered as the most important in Italy in that period. Besides Leandro Bisiach himself, the following instrument makers worked in his laboratory:
Riccardo Antoniazzi
Riccardo Antoniazzi
Riccardo Antoniazzi , Italian violin maker, the sixth child and pupil of Gaetano , was the ablest and most consistent violin maker of his family. Unfortunately he lived somewhat in the shadow of Leandro Bisiach and he did not sign many of the instruments from his best period...
, Romeo Antoniazzi
Romeo Antoniazzi
Romeo Antoniazzi was the eighth son and pupil of Gaetano Antoniazzi.Initially he worked with his father and brother and like them made instruments for Leandro Bisiach....
, Gaetano Sgarabotto, Giuseppe Ornati
Giuseppe Ornati
Giuseppe Ornati - .Considered to be one of the greatest violin makers of his time, he trained as a carpenter and then received the first notions of violin making from the amateur maker Carlo Moneta....
, Ferdinando Garimberti
Ferdinando Garimberti
Garimberti, Ferdinando was an Italian violin maker.Garimberti was born in Mamiano di Traversetolo. He studied with Romeo Antoniazzi, then Riccardo Antoniazzi; he then worked for Giuseppe Pedrazzini and Leandro Bisiach, and later set up independently in Milan.Between 1927 and 1949 his instruments...
, Igino Sderci
Igino Sderci
Igino Sderci was born in Florence, Italy. He devoted his entire career to violin making, studying under master maker Leandro Bisiach.A very prolific maker making more than 700 instruments including many large violas....
, Rocchi Sesto
Rocchi Sesto
-Biography:Sesto Rocchi was born in Reggio Emilia, Italy. He started his violin making studies at the School of Violin Making at the Conservatory of Music in Parma under Gaetano Sgarabotto. After approximately 6 years of study, he moved to Milan to further his learning with Leandro Bisiach...
, Cipriano Briani, Camillo Mandelli, Ferriccio Varagnolo, Camillo Colombo, Vincenzo Cavani, Pietro Paravicini, Albert Moglie, Andrea Bisiach, Carlo Bisiach
Carlo Bisiach
Carlo Bisiach was a violin maker born in Milan Italy. Bisiach’s work contributed to the rebirth of violin making in the region after the difficult times of World War I and World War II....
, Pietro Borghi, Mirco Tarasconi, Leandro Jr. & Giacomo Bisiach, Iginio Siega and Carlo Ferrario.
As is known, after the death of the last great Cremonese Masters after the middle of the 18th century, only the Cerutis remained in Cremona
Cremona
Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...
to prevent that memorable tradition from dying out completely. It was the Antoniazzis who undertook the task of transferring the scant knowledge saved from oblivion from Cremona to Milan.
However the most important event for the renaissance of violin-making in Lombardy was certainly the meeting between Riccardo Antoniazzi and Leandro Bisiach; the latter, thanks to his talent, his taste and his business ability succeeded in founding, at the end of the 19th century, a workshop which soon gained international fame.
Leandro Bisiach did a great deal of research and found some old recipes. The varnish on the instruments from his best period is very beautiful; of transparent and flexible quality.
He primarily used a light red-orange color although it varied greatly from one instrument to another.
He had a special talent for creating "antiqued" varnishes for the numerous "copies" he made. To give it the old look he very often shaded off the varnish only at the base of the back plate. He used a large number of diverse models but principally those of Stradivari Amatise and other models of Guarneri
Guarneri
The Guarneri is the family name of a group of distinguished luthiers from Cremona in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries, whose standing is considered comparable to those of the Amati and Stradivari families...
, Balestrieri, Guadagnini, Gagliano
Gagliano
Gagliano may refer to:* Gagliano Aterno, Abruzzo, Italy* Gagliano Castelferrato, Sicily, Italy* Gagliano del Capo, Lecce, Apulia, Italy* Gagliano , a fictional town in the novel Christ Stopped at EboliPeople with the surname Gagliano:...
, Enrico
Enrico Ceruti
Enrico Ceruti was an Italian violin maker born in Cremona, known as the last of the great line of violinmakers of Cremona.He was the son of Giuseppe Ceruti and grandson to Giovanni Battista Ceruti....
and Giovanni Battista Ceruti
Giovanni Battista Ceruti
Giovanni Battista Ceruti was an influential Italian violin maker, and is considered a direct link to the grand tradition of the Cremonese master violin makers/ Luthiers of the 18th century....
or other violin makers from Veneto in the 18th century. He also utilized many others as chance would have it.
He received various awards and recognition at the World Exhibition of London 1895, Atlanta 1895-1896, Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
1898, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
1900, Milan 1906 and Brussels
Brussels
Brussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
1910.
"The shaping of the back, in Bisiach's instruments, can be identified by the accentuated hollowing out that emphasizes the border, which is rounded. The inlay has a large central white strip and two very narrow black threads, short and slightly closed corners, an echo of the Stradivarian style. The F holes are cleanly and precisely cut, while the columns of the ribs are clearly inspired by the classic Cremonese school. Bisiach's varnishes, usually a beautiful red-brown, have brilliant yellow-gold reflections." - Pardo Fornaciari , Arte Liuteria
Musicians who owned Leandro's instruments include Sebastian Campesi (Legendary American Jazz Violinist) and Nathan Milstein: a copy of 1678 Stradivari made by Leandro Bisiach in 1920. Gennady Filimonov
Quotes
"The baron Andrea Paganini, grandson of the famous Niccolo, wrote a letter of thanks to Bisiach in 1839 for the repair in admirable style of his Stradivarius.Other clients included Sarasate, Joachim, and violincellist Alfredo Piatti, who trusted his violoncello (a Stradivarius, from which Bisiach made a reproduction) to no-one else. This patriarch of violin making must have had a rather striking personality, if his own maestro, Riccardo Antoniazzi, to say nothing of Antoniazzi's father Gaetano and brother Romeo, joined the company that Bisiach had created in his own name." - Pardo Fornaciari , Arte Liuteri
"Leandro Bisiach began in his native town of Casale Monferrato, in 1886, and immediately transferred himself to Milan where, as student of Riccardo Antoniazzi, thanks to Antoniazzi's maestro Enrico Ceruti
Enrico Ceruti
Enrico Ceruti was an Italian violin maker born in Cremona, known as the last of the great line of violinmakers of Cremona.He was the son of Giuseppe Ceruti and grandson to Giovanni Battista Ceruti....
(1803-1883) and of his teacher, Claudio Storioni, he could claim more than just an imaginary affiliation with the great Cremonese school. In fact Storioni had been a student of Carlo Bergonzi, the only true custodian of the secrets of Stradivarius.
We must say that Leandro Bisiach honoured his significant inheritance, which in actuality was not only symbolic. By one of those tricks of fortune that make one suspect the hand of destiny, Leandro senior had come into possession of tools and models that had belonged to the various old Cremonese masters. This seems strange enough in itself, a curious coincidence. In reality, he had much greater luck; among the documents and papers obtained by Fanny Rossi, the widow of Giacomo Stradivari (1822-1901), Bisiach found the most precious and extraordinary item imaginable, that is, the formula for the varnish of the great Antonio Stradivarius from 1704.
In truth, it was not the only varnish of the eighteenth century that Bisiach could use. He had at hand another formula used first by Giovan Battista Ceruti (1755-1817) and later by two other generations of the same family. In addition, in 1929 he gained possession of a collection of documents attributed to Stradivarius, among which he found another formula that dated back to the great Cremonese." - Pardo Fornaciari , Arte Liuteria
"Leandro Bisiach did a great deal of research and found some old recipes. The varnish on the instruments from his best period is very beautiful; of transparent and flexible quality.
He primarily used a light red-orange color although it varied greatly from one instrument to another.
He had a special talent for creating "antiqued" varnishes for the numerous "copies" he made. To give it the old look he very often shaded off the varnish only at the base of the back plate. He used a large number of diverse models but principally those of Stradivari, Amatise and other models of Guarneri, Balestrieri, Guadagnini, Gagliano, Ceruti or other violin makers from Veneto (Venice) in the 18th century. He also utilized many others as chance would have it." - Eric Blot
"Leandro was one of the most influential violin makers and dealers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He won important recognition and prizes in International exhibitions in London (1895), Atlanta (1895-96), Turin (1898), Paris (1900), Milan (1906), and Brussels (1910), and in 1905 opened and successfully ran a workshop that can be compared to the great workshops of J.B. Vuillaume and W.E. Hill and Sons." - Stefan Hersh
""One can easily say that Leandro was as influential in 20th century as J.B. Vuillaume was in the 19th century.
Auction Record:Leandro Bisiach, Violin Milan 1895 Brompton's (London, England) Nov.3, 2008 $93,893 / £59,220" - Gennady Filimonov
External links
- La Liuteria Italiana / Italian Violin Making in the 19th and 20th centuries - Umberto Azzolina
- I Maestri Del Novicento - Carlo Vettori
- La Liuteria Lombarda del '900 - Roberto Codazzi, Cinzia Manfredini 2002
- Dictionary of 20th Century Italian Violin Makers - Marlin Brinser 1978
- Walter HammaWalter HammaWalter Hamma was a German violin maker.His father was the violin maker Fridolin Hamma. Walter Hamma was pupil of the violin making school in Mittenwald 1933-1935. He worked with Ferdinand Jaura and later for Caressa & Francais in Paris. During the second world war the workshop in Stuttgart was...
, Meister Italienischer Geigenbaukunst, Wilhelmshaven 1993, ISBN 3-7959-0537-0 - Liuteria Parmense
View a fine example of Leandro Bisiach violin Milan circa 1890 close-up: